Genomic Medicine Institute Welcomes a New Research Staff Member

Daniel Blankenberg, PhD, a bioinformatics expert, joins GMI as an Assistant Staff member to develop new algorithms and tools for the analysis of genomic datasets. Developing this type of methodology will be key to analyzing the deluge of biomedical data that grows with each technological advance.

Most recently, Dr. Blankenberg was a senior research associate at the Pennsylvania State University. He earned his doctorate in biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology from The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pa., where he completed his postdoctoral fellowship with Anton Nekrutenko, PhD.

A web-based framework for the integration of genome analysis

Dr. Blankenberg is the founder and lead developer of Galaxy, a web-based framework for the integration of genome analysis. This innovation enables biologists without expertise in informatics to perform computational analysis, and share their analysis with other researchers in transparent ways. Galaxy aims to be a one-stop-shop for data analysis; however, scientists can access external resources and visualization applications with a single click through a plugin framework also built by Dr. Blankenberg.

Propelling research through the 'omics age

Both exciting and daunting, the explosion of data that heralds the ‘omics’ age provides a unique set of challenges and opportunities. These opportunities will only bear fruit if researchers have access to the tools and means to analyze data in a reproducible, transparent and collaborative fashion. Through his research, Dr. Blankenberg plans to:

build computational resources and approaches that enable individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, to effectively and reproducibly use high-throughput data and analysis tools for data-intensive science